PHOTOGRAPHERS’ GALLERY —INTERVIE WITH BRETT ROGERS攝影師畫廊—專訪布雷特·羅傑斯

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ART.ZIP: Your background is Art History, and then further study photography, is it? Why photography is so special for you?

BR: When I began my academic career in Australia in the 1970s, there were no places to study the history or theory of photography – even when I arrived in Britain to do my MA at the Courtauld Institute of Art in 1980, I still was not able to focus on photography; it is really only in the last decade that the academic study of photography as part of art history has become available as an option for students. Photography has been very special to me since my adolescence. As I grew up in Australia I felt the importance of the medium as a carrier of meaning perhaps more acutely because of the tyranny of distance.

ART.ZIP: Camera nowadays is much more affordable than the past, everyone could take pictures, what would you say photography’s effect on mass culture? Good ones and bad ones?

BR: The evolution of the camera phone which has led to everyone believing they are a photographer has had positive as well as negative outcomes – clearly the fact that photography has become democratized so that nearly everyone has access to a camera (rather than a small elite who previously could afford the expensive cameras and cost of printing) is a good thing. It enables people to develop their visual awareness of the world and experiment in interesting ways in the production of images. On the other hand, it has also resulted in a tsunami of images which are never going to be stored, saved properly or printed. Some critics feel that this surfeit of images neutralizes their visual impact and emotional force and leads to compassion fatigue. There is no doubt that the impact of the network image and web 2.0 has led to a reassessment of the way in which personal subjectivity may be changing as a result of participation in the global image economy and what level and kind of engagement now constitute its value and meaning.